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 so I told them once more of the gray King mounted on a gray horse with his gray hat, his gray coat, his elbows sticking through the sleeves,—his gray eyes, the outside all gray, but pure gold within!

Just as I was in the middle of my story the notary's clerk ran in to call him to a dying client, so I was interrupted, for he had to leave at once, which was all the more annoying as he had a story of his own on the tip of his tongue. I knew he had been hatching it for an hour, but I wanted first to get off my own little tale. I must admit in all fairness that his was funny when it did come; he has not his equal for a story with a dash of salt to it.

We all went out together, cheered from head to foot. It must have been just about five o'clock or a bit later, and see how in three short hours I had raked in two good dinners, and an order from the notary for an oak press, to say nothing of all the fun we had had going over old stories:—well, we just stopped to take a thimble full of cherry brandy and a biscuit at Rathery's, the apothecary, and then the party broke up. Delavau had finished one story and begun another, so as we wanted to hear the end of it we went on with him as far as Mirandole, and there we left him at last, only stopping to lean